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Tuesday, February 2, 2016

What the Lord requires of us

3 February 2016

Opening
Prayer/Worship

Hymn:
Now the day is over

Theme:
Boundless Riches of Christ

Topic: What the Lord requires
of us

Reading:
Micah 6:1-8

Hear
what theLordsays:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.2Hear,
you mountains, the controversy of theLord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for theLordhas a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.

3‘O my people, what have I done
to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!4For I
brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.5O my
people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of theLord.’

6‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?7Will
theLordbe pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’8He
has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does theLordrequire of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Introduction

God loves and treats us as precious children of His. In Scripture, God declared that He would not
withhold any good thing from us. His
love for us is so strong that nothing shall separate us from it. Although we may never understand why the Lord
loves us so much, He expects us to simply accept His love and mercy toward
us. Accepting the love of God comes with
expectations from the One who blessed us immensely. According to Scripture, while we were yet
sinners Christ died to save us from our sins and reconcile us with the Lord our
Maker. Since Christ died for us, we
should once in a while ask ourselves… what have we done for Him? In this study, we will discuss what the Lord
expects from us.

Questions/Discussion

1) Why
should the Lord expect anything from us?

Isaiah
1:11-20

What to me is the multitude of your
sacrifices? says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do
not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. 12 When you come to appear before me, who asked
this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13 bringing offerings is futile; incense is an
abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot
endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. 14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul
hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes
from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your
hands are full of blood. 16 Wash yourselves;
make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my
eyes;
cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek
justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
18 Come now, let us argue it out, says
the Lord: though your sins
are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like
crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the
good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you
shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Matthew
10:5-8

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions:
‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans,6but go
rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.7As you
go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast
out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

James
1:19-27

You must understand this, my beloved: let
everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of
wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to
save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not merely
hearers who deceive themselves. 23For if any are hearers
of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a
mirror; 24for they look at themselves and, on going
away, immediately forget what they were like. 25But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and
persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed
in their doing. 26 If any think they are religious, and do
not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is
this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself
unstained by the world.

2) What
are the lessons in Matthew 5:1-12 regarding what the Lord requires of us?

Matthew
5:1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the
mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: 3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. 4 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they
will be comforted. 5 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will
inherit the earth. 6 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 ‘Blessed are the
merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8 ‘Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 ‘Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 ‘Blessed are you
when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against
you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the
prophets who were before you.

3) Discuss
some of the factors that hinder us from living mindful of the Lord’s
expectations of our lives. How do we
overcome them?

1
Samuel 15:10-23

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: 11‘I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned back from
following me, and has not carried out my commands.’ Samuel was angry; and he
cried out to the Lord all
night. 12Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul,
and Samuel was told, ‘Saul went to Carmel, where he set up a monument for
himself, and on returning he passed on down to Gilgal.’ 13When Samuel came to Saul, Saul said to him, ‘May you be blessed
by the Lord; I have carried
out the command of the Lord.’ 14But Samuel said, ‘What then is this bleating of sheep in my
ears, and the lowing of cattle that I hear?’15Saul said, ‘They have
brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep
and the cattle, to sacrifice to theLord your
God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed.’ 16Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.’ He
replied, ‘Speak.’

17 Samuel said, ‘Though you are little in your own eyes, are
you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel.18And the Lord sent
you on a mission, and said, “Go, utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites,
and fight against them until they are consumed.” 19Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the
spoil, and do what was evil in the sight of theLord?’ 20Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, I have gone on the mission on
which the Lord sent me,
I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have utterly destroyed the
Amalekites.21But from the spoil the people took sheep and
cattle, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.’ 22And Samuel said,
‘Has the Lord as great
delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices,
as in obedience to the voice of the Lord?
Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed than the fat of rams.23 For rebellion is no less a sin than
divination,
and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has also rejected you from being king.’

Psalm
15:1-5

1 O Lord,
who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?

2 Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
and speak the truth from their heart;3 who do not slander with their tongue,
and do no evil to their friends,
nor take up a reproach against their neighbours;4 in whose eyes the wicked are despised,
but who honour those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;5 who do not lend money at interest,
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.

Those who do these things shall never be
moved.

1
Corinthians 1:18-31

For the message about the cross is foolishness
to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of
God. 19For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom
of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did
not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation,
to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs
and Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we proclaim Christ
crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s
weakness is stronger than human strength.

26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not
many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many
were of noble birth. 27But God chose what is foolish in the world to
shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are
not, to reduce to nothing things that are, 29so that no one might boast in the presence of God. 30He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us
wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast
in the Lord.’

Intercession/Worship

Conclusion

Accepting the love of God comes with expectations from the One who
blessed us immensely.

Closing
Prayer(Collect for Fourth Sunday after the
Epiphany)

Living God, in
Christ you make all things new. Transform the poverty of our nature by the
riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your glory; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.